ADA – Whether a Rangers fan or pro-Huskies, the Forest Hills community came together Friday night to battle a bigger beast in the fourth annual Purple Community game.

The game played and paid benefit to the Van Andel Institute for cancer research, with host Forest Hills Central dominating from start to finish resulting in a 61-27 victory over neighbor Forest Hills Northern.

“I never would have dreamt this would have happened,” Rangers coach Ken George said. “Of course, tonight was important to our team and important to our community, but I never would have dreamt that final score would have happened that way. I’m excited about how we played.”

The Rangers got out to a 9-5 lead in the first quarter en route to a 24-14 halftime tilt.

In the first half, both Sam Uecker and Connor Kelly hit 3s for Central.

For Northern, Tom Dozeman hit a 3 from his night’s total nine to open up his team’s scoring. Michael Hawkins closed out the first half with a 3.

“All the credit goes to (coach) Ken George and his team,” Huskies coach Joe Soule said. “They out worked us tonight. The positive was that we got a game under our belts and we got that experience. We will be able to learn from tonight, but (the Rangers) played their butts off tonight. We have to get what we can from this game before the conference season starts.”

Forest Hills Central’s Xaver Tillman came out of the half on fire. He started with hitting a jumper before bringing home a dunk. He then grabbed a steal that he dished out to Johnny Nutter who landed three of his seven in the game. The Rangers went on a 14-0 run to start the second half before Northern’s Parker Hall hit a three to end the reign.

“I liked our competitiveness,” said George. “I liked our togetherness. I thought our leadership and emotion was good. We haven’t had the best preseason, we didn’t think, and we’ve worked really hard the last couple weeks to try to play better. We did that today.”

The Rangers were led by Chad Bauchan’s 12 points and Alex Dykema’s 10. Kelly scored nine, and Uecker and Nutter got seven.

“The players and coaches and community, we put in a lot of effort into things like tonight,” said George. “We want to remember it, love it and live it. These are kids that will remember this forever. That’s the best thing for me.”